America's Two Earliest Startups Gave True Meaning To The Word 'Perseverance'

Ask any successful entrepreneur or investor what attributes are
critical to building a successful business, and it's a safe bet
that "perseverance" will be near the top of the list.

And there's no better illustration of this than the stories of
two of the country's original successful startups -- the
Jamestown and Plymouth colonies.

In those days, of course, "surviving" as a startup meant
something different than it means today.

In those days, surviving meant, well, surviving.

The Jamestown settlement was sponsored by venture capitalists of
the Virginia Company of London, who were hoping to cash in on the
presumed riches of the new world (the dotcom bubble of the
day).

Jamestown launched in 1607, after several other US colonization
ventures had failed. After two years of investment, the
colony had grown to 214 "employees," but had yet to export any
commercial products.

Then came the winter of 1609-1610, in which a combination of
drought, the delayed arrival of a convoy of supply ships, and a
breakdown in trade negotiations with the Indians devastated the
colony. That winter, 164 of the 214 colonists
died.

This setback was so severe that in the early summer of 1610, the
remaining colonists decided to abandon Jamestown and actually
boarded ships for home. It was only an encounter with a new
convoy of supply ships a short ways downriver--along with new
senior management--that persuaded them to return to Jamestown and
continue the project.

In 1612, five years after the colony's founding, Jamestown
finally figured out a business model, when a colonist named John
Rolfe farmed and exported tobacco. In 1619, a dozen years
after the colony was founded, the first shipload of women
arrived. And then the colonists discovered slave labor,
which had a beneficial impact on the bottom line.

(Not that it was smooth sailing from there. In 1622, Indians
killed 347 colonists and kidnapped others. In 1644, Indians
killed 500 colonists. In the next 50 years, Jamestown's
statehouse burned to the ground 4 times. For more on
Jamestown, see
A History Of The Jamestown Settlement).

And then there was Plymouth.

Before the Pilgrims arrived in what is now Plymouth,
Massachusetts, the area had been the thriving home of ~2,000
Wampanoag Indians. But a few years before the Pilgrims got
there, thanks to bubonic plague imported by European fishermen,
90% of Plymouth's Wampanoag inhabitants died. This made
room for the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims had intended to go to Virginia, but ended up in
Massachusetts. At the end of November, 1620, they anchored in
what is now Provincetown Harbor on Cape Cod, where they stole
corn from some Indians and debated where to establish their
colony. A month later, on December 20th, they arrived in
Plymouth and began to build a settlement.

The first winter was, to put it mildly, rough. There were
the Indians. There was the lack of food. There was disease. There
was the lack of manpower. There were the constant arguments about
priorities, leadership, and rules. And there was, above all,
death.

As Nathaniel Philbrick describes it in Mayflower:

"Tensions among the Pilgrims remained high. With two, sometimes
three people dying a day throughout the months of February and
March, there might not be a plantation left to defend by the
arrival of spring. Almost everyone had lost a loved
one. Christopher
Martin, the Mayflower's governor, had died in early January,
soon to be followed by his wife, Mary. Three other
families--the Rigsdales, Tinkers, and Turners--were entirely
wiped out, with more to follow. Thirteen year-old Mary Chilton,
whose father had died back in Provincetown Harbor, became an
orphan when her mother passed away that winter... By the middle
of March, there were four widowers... With the death of her
husband, William, Susanna White...became the plantation's only
surviving widow. By the spring, 52 of the 102 who
had originally arrived at Provincetown were dead."

In other words, six months after the launch of the Plymouth
startup, half of the original employees had died.

Plymouth struggled for the next several decades, and it never
made a profit for its original investors. But unlike many other
early settlements (and other startups), it survived.